Cornell Alumnus Is Behind $350 Million Gift to Build Science School in City

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Monday that Cornell University had been chosen to build a high-tech graduate school. The school will be operated with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The donor whose $350 million gift will be critical in building Cornell University’s new high-tech graduate school on Roosevelt Island is Atlantic Philanthropies, whose founder, Charles F. Feeney, is a Cornell alumnus who made billions of dollars through the Duty Free Shoppers Group.

Mr. Feeney, 80, has spent much of the last three decades giving away his fortune, with large gifts to universities all over the world and an unusual degree of anonymity. Cornell officials revealed in 2007 that he had given some $600 million to the university over the years, yet nothing on its Ithaca campus — where he graduated from the School of Hotel Management in 1956 — bears Mr. Feeney’s name.

The $350 million gift, the largest in the university’s history, was announced on Friday, but the donor was not named. Officials at Atlantic Philanthropies confirmed on Monday evening that it was Mr. Feeney, a native of Elizabeth, N.J., who is known for his frugality — he flies coach, owns neither a home nor a car, and wears a $15 watch — as well as his philanthropic generosity, particularly to medical research.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Mr. Feeney said in a statement released by Atlantic Philanthropies, “to create economic and educational opportunity on a transformational scale.”

The statement echoed what Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said hours earlier at a news conference officially crowning Cornell, with its partner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, the winner of an intense international competition to build the new graduate school.

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An artist's rendering of a school interior.Credit
Cornell University

“Today will be remembered as a defining moment,” Mr. Bloomberg said, making official what had been apparent since Cornell’s chief rival, Stanford University, withdrew its bid for the campus on Friday. “In a word, this project is going to be transformative.”

Revealing details of the $2 billion plan for the first time, Mr. Bloomberg and the presidents of the two universities said it would include a $150 million venture capital fund for start-up companies that agree to remain in New York for three years, as well as math and science education support for 10,000 city children. They estimated that building the campus would create 20,000 construction jobs, and that it would spin off 600 new businesses over the next generation, creating 30,000 more jobs and as much as $1.4 billion in tax revenue. The city is providing the land and up to $100 million in infrastructure improvements.

“New York City is positioned to become the new technology capital of the world,” said David J. Skorton, the Cornell president, whose personal lobbying and fund-raising commitment to the project proved important in winning the competition.

That has long been a goal for Mr. Bloomberg, who noted that the city had only recently surpassed much-smaller Boston in attracting venture capital for high-tech start-ups, and that such businesses here face a chronic shortage of engineers.

Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly said he could choose more than one winner. He emphasized during the announcement that the city was still negotiating with other schools in the Applied Sciences NYC initiative: Columbia University, which wants to make a new science center part of its expansion in West Harlem; Carnegie Mellon University, whose joint proposal with Steiner Studios is for a parcel the city offered in the Brooklyn Navy Yard; and a consortium led by New York University focused on Downtown Brooklyn.

“We’re eager and hopeful that we’ll be able to find ways to help them realize their proposals,” he said.

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Charles F. Feeney in 2007.Credit
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

He declined to cite specifics when asked about Stanford’s decision to drop out, though he said that he had spoken to the university president, John Hennessy, and that he hoped Stanford might some day come to New York. “The program that we want may not exactly fit what they want,” he said.

City officials spent two months poring over 10,000 pages of documents submitted in seven proposals from 17 institutions. Mr. Bloomberg picked the Cornell-Technion plan, he said, because it was “far and away the boldest and most ambitious” and had an “incredibly aggressive schedule.”

The two universities promise to start offering classes next September in temporary space, and to complete 300,000 square feet of space on Roosevelt Island by 2017 and more than 2 million square feet by 2037. Plans call for about 280 faculty members and 2,500 students in master’s and doctoral programs, a larger contingent than the universities had proposed a few months ago.

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The schools have also committed to training at least 200 teachers each year in science education.

The universities plan to organize the campus around three overlapping, shifting “hubs”: technologies for “connective media,” applicable to everything from finance to social media; health care industries; and sustainable development, chosen in part to mesh with the city’s existing strengths.

Each institution brought critical ingredients to winning the competition. Cornell needed Technion, which has played a role in Israel similar to the role Stanford has had in Silicon Valley, supplying talent and resources that help hundreds of companies set up shop near its Haifa campus. And Technion needed a local partner: “6,000 miles, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean — too far,” the school’s president, Peretz Lavie, noted at the news conference.

Asked what role he might play in financing the campus, the mayor, a billionaire, drew laughter when he said, drily, “You assume that when they make the phone calls, I’d be on the list.”

Topping the list is Mr. Feeney, whose Atlantic Philanthropies had assets of $2.1 billion at the end of 2010, and has announced plans to give it all away over the next decade. The philanthropy was created in 1982 by Mr. Feeney, who has transferred virtually all of his assets to the charity. It has recently become involved with human rights causes. Last year, Atlantic distributed $285 million; the year before, $375 million.

Stephanie Strom contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on December 20, 2011, on Page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Cornell Alumnus Behind $350 Million Gift to Build Science School in the City. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe